10 Video Games You Didn't Realise Were Originally Open World
9. Halo: Combat Evolved
The original Halo went through an intense developmental process before Bungie finally settled on the innovative first-person shooter that finally came to market.
The developer had a bevy of ambitious ideas which they ultimately scrapped, one of which was to make the campaign open world, complete with terrain which could be deformed and reshaped by explosions.
However, technical limitations of the era eventually resulted in Halo becoming a more hemmed-in, linear experience for the most part.
Halo's art director Marcus Lehto recently went into further detail on Twitter, telling a fan that when Bungie was building the very first demo for Halo, the intent was to make the game purely open world.
Lehto added that the game's much-loved fourth level, The Silent Cartographer, was the "closest we got" to open world Halo at the time, with the level's shift away from linear corridors toward a more sprawling, explorable island.
In the end it wasn't until 2021's Halo Infinite that the franchise finally offered up an open world campaign.